Since I Been Down tells the story of Kimonti Carter, who was sent to prison for a drive-by shooting in 1997, when he was barely 18, for the killing of a college student named Corey Pittman.

The film is straightforward about the crime, which Carter deeply regrets. And the film is just as clearsighted in presenting the factors that made Carter’s neighborhood, the Hilltop section of Tacoma, Washington, the target of so much gang violence in the 1990s.

L.A. gangs strategically expanded to the neighborhood, the Hilltop section of Tacoma, and recruited young children, even threatening to kill parents who tried to keep them in school. The film shows how redlining isolated Black people to neighborhoods like Hilltop, and left kids there with almost no good options.

And it explains how Clinton-era policies like Three Strikes put men barely out of childhood behind bars for decades, or for their entire lives. The film’s director, Dr. Gilda Sheppard, strikingly draws subtle connections between child soldiers in Liberia, and the child soldiers coerced into American gangs. She got the idea when she was working on a previous film.

“When I was doing my film in the Liberian refugee camp, I was talking to a lot of people who were child soldiers, and they showed me pictures of themselves. And they put on masks, some of them had been child soldiers at the early age of 11. Right. And they wore masks and capes. Sometimes they had a stuffed animal tucked into their pockets, or their backpacks, as they had an AK 47 in their hands. They were children.

“And I thought, ‘Ah! These folks who are in gangs, these poor Black and brown kids, are like child soldiers, right?”

She enlisted children in masquerade to appear throughout Since I Been Gone to remind viewers that the middle-aged men now behind bars were in many cases just 11 years old when they joined gangs. The film also includes dancers, dramatic re-enactments, and other interstitial performances to allow moments of beauty and reflection amidst the hard facts.

“I always think that if you do something creative, then you’re on a healing path, because you can take a theory and organically move it around yourself, and find your story in that theory,” she says. “So I think it brings intimacy, and that’s the reason why I like to work with people who are most impacted as my storytellers.”

The latter section of Since I Been Down offers a surprising look at prison life, and how men like Carter are trying to change — and to provide hope to others behind bars.

Carter became part of the Black Prisoners’ Caucus and founded T.E.A.C.H., or Taking Education and Creating History. The film records intimate conversations between inmates, striving to understand themselves and each other better, and dreaming of a life on the outside.

A professor emeritus of sociology at Evergreen State College, Sheppard spent 12 years earning the trust of corrections officials, and the families of the men she profiles, to provide a detailed and empathetic history of their lives.

She gained trust first by teaching sociology behind bars, and later by serving as a sponsor for the Black Prisoners’ Caucus.

“I went from Dr. Sheppard, Professor Sheppard, to Auntie Gilda, to Mama G. So, you know, that kind of trust and community building, it’s what I go on now,” she says.

That level of trust allowed her to access family picture books and old VHS tapes, so that her film includes images of her subjects from their childhood and teenage years.

She hopes Since I Been Down will encourage people to look differently at people behind bars who have strived for decades to make amends for their crimes. She has shown the film to judges, lawmakers and prosecutors.

“It’s kind of like what bell hooks says: She says forgiveness and compassion are always linked,” Sheppard notes. “How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing, and yet, at the same time, remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”